I've been gluten-free and lactose-free (and oat-free) for 9 years now. Look here for advice on eating out, brand foods and recipe ideas. Also check out the pages on food preparation and Yes/No foods if you are catering for someone with these food intolerances. There's still a wealth of food out there to be enjoyed!...

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Friday, December 30, 2011

Yay I have an awesome yoghurt maker that my inlaws bought me for Christmas. It's got 7 glass jars that fit into a warming unit. Although you could use a thermos instead, but then you need to be careful about sterilisation when transferring to other containers to store in the fridge, so I think the multiple pot makers are the best.

Fingers crossed for my first batch of yoghurt!! I found this plant foods website that gives good troubleshooting tips as well as step by step instructions, but if you google it there are others. Already I realise I've not used the unsweetened soya milk but we'll see how this batch turns out in the morning...

...It worked! It worked! it set and it is delicious. I used 2 teaspoons of live yoghurt and sugar in each pot. I used alpro. It's a shame I can't find a small pot of live soya yoghurt to use as starter culture as this would make it even more economical. Will keep looking!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Gravy is one of the things most people freak out about when they first go gluten free. There are some powdered mixes that are gf and lactose free but a lot are not very nice and why bother when it's so easy to make yourself!

Try it. Hopefully you'll be a convert too!

Pour the meat juices of your roast into a saucepan and add a gf stock cube (I use Kallo) and about a pint of hot water. Heat gently. Next add 3 tsp of potato starch to half a cup of water and mix well. Pour the starchy water into the gravy and stir, heating through until it goes clear and thickens. Add herbs (I usually use marjoram), salt and pepper to taste.

Note: I always freeze any leftovers in individual portions for when I have sausages and mash.

It's stressful enough trying to keep an inquisitive toddler away from a nursery cookery lesson with flour, crumbs etc everywhere, but obviously I also don't want him to miss out on the creative side of it all too. GF playdough is a great help!

It's a little tricky to make - at first it will look too runny and then you'll think it is just going to burn on the bottom, so be sure to keep stirring it while you gently heat it. Once made, it has a great rubbery/plasticy texture - even better than real playdoh I think! - you'll have to soak the pan after but the cooked dough itself is really easy to clean off stuff. Works great with all the playdoh factory tools.

Rice/Quinoa Salad

Sushi (I make it with veg or smoked salmon)

GF Pasta salad (but you’ll need a really decent brand of rice pasta, like salute, otherwise it will be a horrid texture when cold)

As you can see - not much choice for cold lunches! I often take hot food in a thermos snack pot with me when I'm out and about all day. Make sure it will keep food hot for as long as you need to avoid food going bad - a good food thermos will have a wide neck opening and will keep things hot for 6hrs or cold for 8 hrs.

Snacks (Healthy ones!)

Baby crisps (low fat, no salt, no additives)

popcorn

Poppadoms (you can microwave these for 1 min each instead of frying them)

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Most normal recipes will work if you just substitute with GF flour and DF marg and add a little xanthum or glycerine. You may find you need to add vanilla as many GF flours are pretty tasteless. Dense cakes like brownies work especially well as they usually use ground almonds rather than flour. Be sure to use a GF baking powder and find a GF DF chocolate though. The best recipes I've tried are a morrisons bakewell cake where I adapted the biscuit base and Phil vickery's cake book.

Biscuits

There are some pretty odd recipes in books and on the web that are way too crumbly or gooey or just come out like hard bricks! There's only a couple I make now: my traybake things and shortbread. Glutenfree Goddess does have some good ones too like her raspberry coconut bars.

Bread

Still the hardest thing to create without gluten! I've tried so many recipes and my loaves are still all rather "special" and not good enough to share with non gf people. If you're happy to use a few eggs in a recipe you can get reasonable results, but I'd rather persist in my experiments for egg-free bread as, although I do eat eggs, I don't want to eat them everyday. Flat bread, DL's BBC recipe. GFononashoestring has some great recipes but all using starchy flours/ flour mixes, so will be experimenting with my own some more...

Don't waste money on most of the rubbish GF DF cookbooks out there on the market. The majority have a few questionable baking recipes, use flours you can't get hold of easily in the UK and contain lots of recipes that are so obviously gluten free it's insulting, like curries, roasts, salads!...

You just need one book to give you a good introductory explanation of how to shop and cook gf. Alternatively, swat up online (have a look at my yes/no foods and food prep pages, although I'm also lactose intolerant so it includes info on avoiding that too). Label all safe items in your kitchen - or like me make a small dedicated "gluten-area" to help you control contamination.

Once you have learnt the rules of what is always safe, what labels to check and what to outright avoid it really does get easier to manage and to get creative in the kitchen. The first few months of going gf can feel like going cold-turkey for all the foods you love, but it does get better. And you will feel better.

Here's a list of meal ideas when you're looking for inspiration. Some have links to my recipes.

Soft-boiled Egg and soldiers. (essential to
get some quality GF bread for this otherwise it will fall apart and
you won't be able to dip! - see my brand foods list).

Full English. Most baked beans are GF (check
label. Maize starch is fine but you must avoid the sausagey beans),
McCain's hashbrowns, Black farmer or Debbie &Harry sausages and obviously, tomatoes,
mushrooms and bacon are all GF. Heinz tomato ketchup is GF.

GF pancakes + maple syrup

Corn Tortillas - see my recipe/instructions. You could use up leftover soft tortillas by melting cheese/soya cheese and spinach between two and cutting into triangles.

Mix until the yeast is dissolved and then add to the flour mix along with:

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbs ground flax seed

1 tbsp herbs

(chopped olives) optional

Mix the batter well, pour into a greased silicone cake mould and leave to one side for 10 mins. The mixture should firm up as the psyllium and flax seeds form a gel substance when wet. Although this bread doesnt rise that much, leave it for 30 mins in a warm place so that yeast produces bubbles and it will have a good bready texture.

Bake for 30 mins or until cooked through. Leave to cool before cutting and serving.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

This is a simple french recipe. I keep the potato skins on for extra vitamins and fibre.Thinly slice 6-8 large king edward potatoes - about 1/2 cm thick. Melt approx. 50-70g butter. Layer the potatoes and pour on the butter til you have 3 layers in a wide oven-proof dish. Add salt and pepper.Bake for 50 mins in a hot oven until browned on top and soft in the middle.

N.B. Dont worry if it looks like you dont have enough butter as you can pour it from the bottom of the dish halfway through cooking and baste.

Variation: Add a thinly sliced onion in amongst the potatoes (but not on the top layer). Top with cheese for the last 10 mins of cooking.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Although you can buy commercial mixes that are GF (check the Coeliac FoodandDrinkDirectory) it's much nicer to make your own and very Simple. Most recipes use powdered garlic and onion, but I don't keep these in the house and fresh work fine. Shallots have a more concentrated flavour than normal onions and work well:

Friday, August 26, 2011

Oh my! I just discovered that my home town has a mexican shop that sells tortilla flour and presses. They also sell ready made GF Corn tortillas. Thanks UK Gluten Free Blog for your posting! Must make some pronto. I haven't had a corn tortilla since Discovery started putting wheat flour in theirs, so about 4 yrs!! Okay so I could just buy tacos, but they aren't even mexican and are pretty oily and salty so it's kind of like having crisps for your dinner! Authentic Tortillas are much nicer and healthier:

Mix the ingredients together, adding more water if needed to make a soft, pliable dough. These quantities should make 6 tortillas - make into balls a little bigger than a ping pong ball. Flatten each ball using a tortilla press with sandwich bags/parchment to stop them sticking - Otomi sell these).

Dry fry each tortilla until it bubbles and then turn over and fry until the second side browns.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I had some yummy polenta balls and dips at Bristol Watershed yesterday. They were fried polenta balls flavoured with peppers, mint etc. These ones were deep fried, but I baked mine to make a healthier version...

Polenta Balls
Boil the salted water and add the cornmeal.
Stirring occasionally, cook until it thickens (10mins). [mix in any extra flavours]
Leave to stand for 15 mins.
Divide the mixture (into 10-15 pieces) and roll into ping pong sized balls, placing [a filling] in the middle if you want. If the mixture sticks to your hands too much, fill a bowl with cold water and keep dipping your hands and the spoon in it. You don't need to coat the balls in flour or anything as polenta will hold it's shape.
Bake the balls on a baking tray for 20mins, turning once to cook them evenly.

Flavours
You could stir in a tbsp of sundried tomato paste, olive tapenade, pesto or 2 tbsps of grated hard cheese. Or you could blitz some herbs in a blender and add those e.g. coriander, basil, parsley.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

So I watched Rachel Allen's homecooking programme this weekend and got a hankering for
those chinese takeway style crispy duck rolls. Her recipe is quite a healthy way to cook them.

To make them gluten free I would use chinese rice spring roll wrappers. You could pre-wrap them before serving with Hoisin dipping sauce (see recipe below). Alternatively, assemble them at the table: Pour hot water into a wide shallow bowl and soak each rice wrap for 30secs-1min (until soft). Place on a chopping board and filling with the duck, spring onions, cucumber and sauce. Roll like a parcel - fold in top and bottom and then roll (like a spring roll parcel).

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Normally, you'd use apricots in this recipe, but with an abundance of plumbs this time of year, they make a great substitution. If you want to be authentic, you'd cook the rice separately but I'm a big fan of one-pot cooking.

Brown the lamb in a little oil in a casserole dish and add the onions and spices. Add half the stock and slow cook in the oven (with the lid on) on a medium temperature for 2 hrs. Add in the rest of the stock, the veg and the uncooked rice and return to a hot oven for 30 mins or until the rice is cooked.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

There's a great food blog post on Gluten free living and baking by Dan Lepard on the BBC site . The bread recipe using flax and psillium looks inspired, so will definitely be giving that a try. Also, there are some good links at the bottom of that page to other peoples recipes and blogs.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Easy, delicious sweet and sour sauce recipe below. Cook any meat first, then add chunky veg (inc onions) and chopped pineapple and cook until kind of aldente. Then add the sauce and heat through until it thickens (2-5 mins).

Monday, June 13, 2011

Update: With xanthum, this recipe makes nice american style cookies. I've reduced the amount I use though as it does give a bitter after-taste. You can make them without xanthum altogether but they won't hold together as well and won't have that doughy quality in the middle. If you use too high a mix of white refined flour (like doves rice flour blend), they'll turn out more like fluffy cakes than biscuits (but taste nice anyway!).

Mix the flours, choc chips, xanthum and baking soda together. In another bowl mix the sugar, oil and egg and then add to the dry mixture.

Add just enough milk to make a thick batter (i.e. much thicker than for fairy cakes, it will be more like a soft dough) - it should be hard work to mix and when dolloped on a baking tray the mixture should stay in big blobs. space them apart on the baking tray as they will spread lots.

Bake for half an hour until browned and until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool before removing from the baking sheet.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Ok, so I was thinking how different my son's life will be when he grows up. How different technology will be and what the internet will offer. I hope that he will have free access to all the classic books and music that no longer have copyright attached to them. Something made possible only by the internet. There should be so much stuff in the public domain by then. At least I hope there will be.

But unfortunately for this to happen requires sharing-minded people to upload things on to websites and, well,.....share stuff! Wikipedia was developed with this idea in mind (and functions on charity donations as it's such a massive operation that it has to be staffed) and the Gutenberg project has collated hundreds of ebooks that can be downloaded for free. This kind of large-scale sharing of free information doesn't happen a lot at the moment.. Sure there's a mass of info on the web, but with billions of forums/blogs/status updates, a lot of it is just telling us when someone we know or don't know had a cup of tea! groan! The rest of the internet seems devoted to making money or duping us into downloading lethal viruses (just type "free" anything into google and you'll see what I mean)....

It's the same with gluten free recipes on the web. You'll trawl though lots of sites that are all selling something - a magic new flour blend (overpriced) or a recipe book (most of which have 1 or 2 decent recipes in and then lots of questionable ones or insultingly simple salad ones). I read a webpage recently about dreemee co. flour mixes that harks on about how Coeliac Disease has affected their family mealtimes and how important it is to them to share their amazing cake/bread recipes with other fellow coeliac sufferers .... etc.... so, if they feel this so emphatically, why don't they just publish the recipe for their flour mix? Why try and squeeze money out of us?

The glutenfree goddess blog is the first decent collection of gluten free baking recipes I've found online. Gluten free girl has quite a few recipes and guidance and lots of general blogging about running restaurant with hubby. See bottom right of this page for more recommended links to general recipe and bento box recipe websites (Japanese style packed lunches).

At the moment my blog is just a collection of recipes I've experimented with and info I've found useful. However, at some point (when I have time!) I aim to take decent photos of the recipes and archive them better on the site so they can be searched through more easily. When I have a fair amount of reliable staple recipes, I'll also publish a free PDF so you can print them at your leisure.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Tip the beans into a bowl and mash roughly with a fork. In another bowl, blanch the onions and garlic in hot water (just so that they're not completely raw), drain and add to the beans. Add the oil and paste and mix well.
Spread on toast to enjoy.

Variations:This also works well with tinned sardines mixed in or smoked mackerel. mash in some smoky vegan cheese like No Moo for even more flavour.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Mix all the dry ingredients. Melt the margarine (20 seconds in a microwave) and add to the mixture along with the eggs. Pour into an oiled cake tin or a lipped baking tray lined with baking parchment or a silicone sheet.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Sainsbury's are stocking a great range of vegan easter chocs. The Choices caramels are available all year and are my personal favourite, but the humdinger choc bunny is lovely and smooth and I am so chuffed to find a Vegan "milk" choc egg. Yay! Not all vegan choc has to be dark or odd and powdery tasting.

For something a bit different , Booja booja do great dark choc truffles (find in health food shops) and humdinger do amazing white choc buttons (tesco).

Mix dry ingredients and then add the wet. Mix thoroughly and pour into a lined cake tin (or a silicone cake mould). Bake for 30 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

Variations:Add Lemon flavouring + Lemon Zest, Poppy seeds or replace the jam with apple puree and some cinammon. Also, if you use strawberry instead of apricot jam it gives the cake a honey-ish flavour!

For a more moist cake, replace the marg with oil (i.e. use half a cup).

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Rub crumble ingredients together until they resemble breadcrumbs and sprinkle over chopped up fruit. Bake in the oven until browned on top (20-30mins 180c).

Variations: If using sour or unripe fruit, sprinkle the fruit with sugar first before topping with the mixture. If you don't like the bottom of the crumble mixture getting soggy, put thin slices of apple on top of the fruit before topping with the crumble mixture.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

*Ok, so it's not really canelloni if you use flat lasagne sheets (GF canelloni tubes don't exist) but it's not really lasagne either!

Pour boiling water over a small bags worth of Spinach and leave until wilted. Drain and blend in a blender.

Fry an onion and some garlic in a pan. Fry 200g mince until brown and add a little of the spinach mixture.

Make a white sauce by gently frying 3 tbsps GF flour in a little oil in a big pan and slowly adding a pint of chicken stock or soya milk (or a mixture of the two). Add a tsp dijon mustard and the rest of the spinach mixture. Use a balloon whisk to get it nice and creamy and avoid lumps.

Layering: Spread the beef mixture in an oven proof dish and top with thin slices of courgette. Place a double layer of GF lasagne sheets over the courgettes. Pour over the spinach sauce, sprinkle with cheese/soya cheese and cook in a hot oven for 30 mins or until the pasta is cooked and the sauce has browned on top.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

I'm really impressed with the new Phil Vickery baking book (which my lovely husband bought me for Christmas). The textures are great - I've made the lemon biscuits which are soft! I've made the honey cupcake things which are lovely and moist! Thank you Phil!

There are no really difficult to get hold of ingredients unlike the American GF recipe books I have, like babycakes, which ask for special bean flour and liquid/fruit sugars. Also, I'm pleased the recipes work well with Doves Farm GF plain flour mix as I cannot be bothered to make my own mixes or keep loads of different types of flour in my cupboards*.

There's a good range of recipes -focaccia, breadsticks, biscuits, small cakes, big cakes, fancy coffee cakes. I may well not use any other inferior GF baking books again!

Finally!!.....A GF baking book with recipes I can proudly feed to my friends with ingredients I can buy in a supermarket. Happy Baking Mama!...